


Climbing The Tower

by strixus



Series: The Book of Dreams [3]
Category: Gundam Wing, The Endless
Genre: Crossover, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-27
Updated: 2009-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 07:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strixus/pseuds/strixus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Destiny takes an interest in Chang Wufei. Wufei is not amused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Sorrow in Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Ballad on Climbing Youzhou Tower
> 
> Witness not the sages of the past,  
> Perceive not the wise of the future,  
> Reflecting on heaven and earth eternal,  
> Tears flowing down I lament in loneliness.
> 
> \- Chen Zi'ang

The moon was high in the night sky, a white crescent like the curving claw of a black beast curled in the heavens, and stars glittered like water on the scales of the same beast, as though it had just rose from some celestial stream. On the earth, far below the celestial serpents coils of night, a tawny skinned form pulled its self from a mountain pool into the cool night air without a shiver, and on to a flat rock beside the sluggish but clear snow melt fed stream. Long, glistening black hair hung in wet strands around the figure's shoulders, a distinct curl in it from where it was usually perpetually bound at the back of the skull still visible despite the washing it had received in the stream. Hands, long fingered and strongly muscled, brushed back the hair except for a few unruly strands that clung to neck and forehead. Eyes that were as dark as age darkened mahogany scanned the edge of the clearing out of paranoid habit more than anything.

Chang Wufei, warrior son of the Chang Clan now exiled from their mountain lands of northern China decades ago to a distant and crumbling colony, had come home. He had decided to disappear from the war for a few weeks, his presence unmissed in the confusion, he knew, and find his family lands in the Mongolian borderlands of China. No more than three hundred square miles of forest, shear mountains, and river rapids, with little useful land to anyone. Since his family's removal, it had gone wild, or at least what further it could have gone from its barely tamed state. His blood told him more than any map or deed could tell him. He was home.

A careful seeming night breeze caressed bare flesh, and Wufei smiled introspectively. Two days ago he had made camp beside this stream in the high hills, in a sheltered cleft like valley carved by the progression of this lonely run of water to the broiling, rapid torn river below in the valley. Since then he felt as wild as the mountains themselves, and more at peace than he ever had in his life. This was a place he was destined to be; this was right. He had swiftly learned how to hunt the sparse game in the forest, hind and large birds, and knew already the flora that was edible. He was a survivor, he had lived off less in his time in the colony when things had been scarce, and this place was a land of plenty to him.

Behind him, about twenty yards away, the light from his fire danced warmly, illuminating his camp and the prone form of Nataku. His camp was simple: a lone tent, a wash line, and a cleaned and dressed hind carcass he had killed a day ago and been eating from since. To the side was the rough and well-worn military motorcycle that served as close range transportation. It had not been run since he arrived, it was too loud in such silence.

The wind touched him again, blowing quickly drying strands of hair loose from the rest, up and around his face. The dark eyed boy stood, and pulled his clothes close to dress. The touch of soft, freshly washed silk was a simple joy to the Chinese boy, but one he cherished secretly. He had washed the loose shirt and pants before bathing, and both were now dry though wrinkled hopelessly. He simply had learned to ignore the deep wrinkles in the last few years. With a sash, he belted the pants as he stood, and then tied back his hair carefully. Years of training had caused it now to always form its seemingly painstakingly groomed appearance with little work. No stray hairs escaped the band, and all formed the strait tail at a perfectly even length. While he admired the gall of the American, Duo Maxwell, to wear such a mass of hair, he still wondered why the boy wore it in such a demeaning way as a braid. Perhaps if they met again, he would ask, but he doubted he would ever understand him or any of the others properly.

Barefoot, he walked back to the camp. The fire was warm, cheerful, and a kettle of water was boiling happily suspended from a spit above it. Perfect timing. Wufei turned and dug a battered tin cup from a rucksack near the tree where his kill was hung as well as a ladle and a small white bag tied with cord. Setting the cup down near the grass mat he had placed close to the fire, he ladled boiling water into the cup and hung the ladle on the spit support. He opened the bag and added a carefully measured pinch of the herbal tea mix to the cup. It was a bitter, strong and dark tea, far different from what he had grown up drinking, but one he found very appealing and head clearing. He left it to seep and walked back over to the tree. He pulled a short hunting knife from the tree and used it to trim a long thin strip of meat from the ribs of the hind. He cleaned the knife, placed it back in the tree, and walked over to the fire, venison in hand. He placed the meat on a flat, hot rock near the edge of the fire he had been using as a cooking surface and listened as it sizzled appetizingly, sitting on the grass mat next to his tea, legs crossed in their usual fashion.

The night air was invigorating, he thought, so much different from the nights in the crumbling fragile colony that was the last stronghold of his family. Yet he still missed what had been his home for his whole life. He missed the smiles of his grandmother, the drilling with his brothers and father, the work with his uncles and cousins on the hydroponics farm that supported the family. It had been a hard life, far from comfortable, but it had been home. Yet this was home too, an older home of mountains and forests, and one that he had only heard of in stories from the eldest of the clan, who had left it as a child in the forced relocation to space. He shook his head and turned the cooking slab of flesh on the stone with a thick, sharpened stick. His tea was strong enough at last to drink, and he lifted the hot metal cup in his left hand and drank deeply. The warmth spread through him, and settled comfortingly in his gut, and he felt slight rumblings of hunger prompted by the tea.

The venison cooked fast, even in this primitive way of cooking it, and it was done enough to eat in another few minutes. Using the same stick he had turned it with, Wufei lifted the cut of meat, and began to eat it strait from the stick, headless of the fresh from the fire sizzle of heat.

The meal lasted only a few minutes at best, the tea washing down the tough and lean meat. The carcass would last him another few days fresh, and he would begin cutting and salting pieces of it tomorrow with the sun. While those carefully schooled manors had gone to the hounds, he had become far from wild. He knew what he needed to do to survive, and spent most of the time doing those things. But there were other things, older habits, that he didn't break either. One of which was an evening ritual he had preformed since he was a small boy, barely able to understand why he had to do what he did, before he had even been given his first sword. He cleaned up after his meager dinner, rinsed the cup in the sluggish mountain stream, and packed everything away. He banked the fire, cleared the area around it meticulously. Now it was time.

From the base of the tree that he had hung the carcass of the hind from, he picked up with most prized possession: the hand forged sword that had been given to him by his father as a wedding present. Its handle was bound in white rayskin, braided in deep blue, with a scabbard of the same color of dyed wood, inlayed with bits of mother of pearl along the length like dragon scales. The blade was old, having survived the relocation, but the handle and scabbard new, since the originals had been destroyed in the exodus. It was his one real possession, his one link to his family and past. Wufei slid the scabbard into his sash carefully, letting the spacers hold it in place.

He moved away from the fire, towards the edge of his small clearing, and carefully oriented himself to have the most room possible. The dark haired pilot of the Shenlong slowly assumed a concentrating stance, legs braced and back strait, one hand resting on the butt of the sword, and slowly began the mental routine that governed his battles. His eyes did not so much as close, but stop seeing beyond their lenses. His mind focused, drawing energy from the centers of his body out into his limbs, concentrating it in his hands and feet. He felt sharply the grit of the earth beneath his feet and the damp tang of distant rain or mist in the air, smelled the pines and bamboo and clean water of the forest.

With a grace born of no thought, the curved blade left the scabbard in a glowing silver arc, lit into white fire by the rising moon and stars, tinged red by the close fire. It continued its arc, and the body followed by reflex. The flesh was an extension of the blade, moving the steel to where it wished to be, not seeking to control. Through forms old enough to have lost their names in the distant mists of time, the bronze skinned body flowed like poured gold. All of the anger of the war and battles vanished, pushed out and down into the ground by the energy of the steel.

But when the flowing forms ended and the sword again returned to its dark scabbard, there was no longer the sense of the mountains and rivers surrounding the boy. He was someplace very distant.


	2. Life is Like Empty Mountain Range

An old and bloated red sun hung low in the pale red and blue sky, over a place as far into the autumn of its life as the sun, bounded by an invisible horizon where the pale green of the grass and the pale yellow of the sky slowly faded into one another. The garden was old, the trees and bushes stunted into gnarled knots and twists like the fingers of an old woman, the grass a pale green clipped close to the ground. It was an empty place, of crossing white gravel and dark slate paths, meandering lost through the groves of trees and topiary gardens, where winds were both hot and cold at play like wild children in the grass. The winds smelled old and empty, like the closets of abandoned houses, dusty, dry and stale. The garden was empty except for the winds, a place older than time and far beyond its touch.

And in the middle of an intersection between a white gravel path and a black slate tiled path, Chang Wufei found himself standing, his hand still clasp on the hilt of the sword at his waist, the wind cooling the sweat on his body from the workout. The dark eyed pilot of the Shenlong shivered, unnerved and unwilling to allow himself to be unnerved simultaneously. Where am I, he wondered, eyes scanning the empty, desolate place in search of anything familiar. There was nothing, nothing except the crossing paths of white crushed gravel and dark slate that merged to a checkerboard of texture and color in the intersection where he stood.

And thus faced with the option of gravel or slate tile, and thinking only of his bare feet, Wufei turned and walked down the black slate path towards the low hung sun. Hours could have passed, or days, or only minutes, Wufei could not tell. The sun hung motionless in the sky, throbbing heart-like against the pale colors of the sky. There was no sense of the passage of time any more than the sense of a passage of space. The garden was empty, silent, and still but for the wind on all three counts. No birds sang, not even the rude cawing of a crow or the abstract calls of a mockingbird. No animals moved in the bush or grass, not even grasshoppers or aphids crawled on the blades. The garden was lifeless, it seemed, except for the resolutely walking form of the Shenlong pilot.

Wufei stopped, and looked around, finding himself next to a dark twisted topiary growing next to the path. It was shaped like a dragon; long and sinuous, outstretched from the ground where its tail formed the roots of the shrub up into curves of foliage that seemed impossible. Eyes of dark red blossoms focused light yellow centers on him from high above, and Wufei found himself looking away, without thinking. Beneath its gaping maw, tucked into the folds of green leafy flesh, a single white flower bloomed in place of the dragon pearl. But it was nothing more than a strangely trimmed plant among many in this odd landscape. With no more certainty and even less hope of understanding where he was, Wufei turned and continued to walk towards the never moving sun.

More time past, perhaps days, perhaps years, for the feeling of the passage of time was non existent in this place. He grew more and more uneasy, unsure of any ideas he may have had about where he was. This was no dream, it was too real, too tactile, and yet it could be nothing else but. He watched the movements of the wind through the trees, and realized it was like watching a looped holographic projection. It was the same wind, the same leaves, the same air, every time the wind blew. It was though he was caught in some projectionist loop of film.

The thought made the Chinese pilot stop in his tracks and look around. He had just crossed another intersection of checkerboard white gravel and black slate, what could have been the second or hundredth one like it. Up ahead he saw something in the distance, green and looming, on the left side of the path. It couldn't be, he thought as he broke into a run towards it. For a two hand count of meters he ran, bare feet slamming into stone headless of the bruised heels and toes, until he all but skidded to a stop in front of the shape.

It was the same topiary. Down to every detail, the pruned scales and blight spots on the leaves, it was the same dragon topiary he had passed before. There was no question in his mind any more that there was something going on more than an empty garden. With his hand on the hilt of his sword, he turned around sharply, and was confronted by yet another unexpected sight.

The figure was tall, towering over him by a good half meter if not more, dressed in a formless, hooded robe of a rough spun dark brown cloth that hung in flaps and folds that hid any hint at body size and shape, falling in brown pools of cloth on the tile path. The hood hung low, obscuring in a dark shadow any hit of a face or features. Wufei went instinctively into a defensive crouch, sword coming up above his head in a silver arc to a position to defend from any move the taller form might make to attack him.

"Who are you?" he demanded, trying hard to keep the panic that was almost fear out of his voice. He scolded himself for it instantly. Fear clouded the mind, made one slow to act. Fear killed the mind, and in so doing, often killed the person. He waited, sword blade unwavering, glowing a bloody silver in the light from the dying sun. The figure did not move to even so much as breath it seemed, nor did it speak.

"Who are you?" He demanded louder, angry now at this silent thing that seemed to be his tormenter. His mind was racing, but kept coming back to the same thought. Oh my blessed Natal, help me find my way amongst this madness, he all but screamed in his mind. The figure was still without a voice, but it rewarded him with movement.

From inside the folds and falls of brown cloth, a long arm extended, robe falling back to reveal a pale skinned hand. The hand was simultaneously human and very alien, with too many joints and far too many fingers, but its motion was one of command. The fingers curled inward on themselves towards the upturned palm, beckoning Wufei to follow. With out waiting to see if the Chinese pilot headed or understood the motion, the form turned fluidly, its robes moving like the dark brown waters of a swamp churned by the passing of an alligator, and began to walk away.

Wufei stood from his crouch, and puzzled for a moment before following the long striding steps of the figure in the brown robe. Perhaps it would lead him to someone or someplace that would answer his questions, that would return him back to the mountains and his unguarded Gundam. He shuddered at the thought of Nataku in the hands of the enemy. Never would he allow such a thing. He moved swiftly to follow; sword still in hand and at the ready. There was no need to take chances.

The figure in brown reached the intersection of white gravel and black slate, and turned perpendicular to the slate path to follow the white gravel. Catching up at last, the youngest son of the Chang clan moved to walk on the soft but stiff grass beside the path, mindful of bruised and already sore bare feet, a pace behind the swift, fluid steps of the tall form.

Together, they walked, the only two signs of life in a place empty of both life and change, a place caught in some strange loop of time, beyond all reach or touch of its slowly defiling hands. Two living figures, separated by a cruel silver arc of steel held between them, moving to the unknown purpose of one, and the unthought purposes of the other, towards an unknown destination beyond the invisible horizon of the Garden of Forking Ways.


	3. Facing Snow

On a plain unbound by a horizon rendered invisible in a slow gradient from the yellow green of the grass and trees to the pale pinks and oranges of the sky, two figures moved with purpose along an arrow shot path of white gravel. One walked with the boneless, formless fluidity of a creature more at home in the spirit than in the flesh, wrapped in a course homespun robe of brow cloth that only added to the figure's grace. Its flesh was invisible, hidden in the folds and falls of cloth that hooded the face and spilled luxuriantly onto the gravel into a graceful train of sackcloth, but its movements betrayed its lack of humanity in the ease of its too many jointed strides. Behind it, barefoot on the grass beside the path, the second figure struggled to keep up, its human clumsiness only made more obvious by the blade of drawn steel held out against an inanimate attacker, stained red by the light of an aged sun that hug low in the sky. Loose silk covered legs and torso, leaving the bronzed flesh of face, arms and feet exposed to the slowly frothing winds of the garden. The figure was beyond its element, grasping for purchase on a slope that had no rise or run, in a place where time ran in the shape of a sphere, but with more dimensions.

Chang Wufei was beginning to tire. It was not the walking, nor was it the soreness of his feet, nor anything physical in of its self: it was the steady creeping strangeness of the day. He was in such an alien setting; surrounded by such alien sensations, that his mind refused to wrap itself around the idea that this was even happing to him. He was a skeptic to the core, but raised with a traditional sense of religious duty. And this place, and this thing, fit no where into anything that he understood in the workings of time or space. So he had attempted to do with it as he did most thins he could not accept: block out its existence in his mind. But he simply could not continue to block out the continuing strangeness of it all. The empty, looped garden that seemed strait from the Hells of his ancestors, the silent, multi-jointed mute with too many fingers, it was too much for any sane person to deal with, even him. It wearied him beyond his ability, beyond what the war, constant infighting, a lifetime of thin living, the death of Nataku, or anything else had been able to do to him. All he wanted was for things to make sense once more.

Ahead of him, looming above the slender and towering form of his guide, a line of huge, gray stone statues had appeared in the distance, obviously large simply by the size prospective dictated them at this distance. Seven mammoth stone forms, each human, towered out of a stand of trees. The path had widened slightly, and began to be intersected at regular intervals by curved paths perpendicular to the white gravel, as though a spiral path were slowly tightening in on their destination. The statues were the first real sign of perspective Wufei had seen, and he was grateful for them, as nothing more than a sign of the normal functioning of nature.

When the statues had begun to fill almost half the sky, something changed subtly in the world. It was not so much as passing into something, but passing out of it. There was suddenly time where there had been no time before, only the perpetual loop of the winds, and distance where there had been only the feeling of being trapped in the same loop of painted garden for eternity. At this transition, the grass became greener, and pairs of fanciful topiaries lined the lane. Everything was more alive, more real, than it had been before, and for all of this the Shenlong Gundam's pilot was infinitely relieved. His mute guide continued, pace never wavering, silent but for the burlap swish of the robes with every step. The landscaping slowly changed as they approached closer to the statues, with more bushes and topiaries, most of the old style white roses, and even grape arbors that spanned lazily above the path at regular intervals. There was more a sense of order, and of planning, a sense of human presence that had been lacking before. Despite this, Wufei and his silent, many-jointed guide were still the only signs of animal life in the garden.

The trees became thicker, forming a high, green vault above the pathway. They were old hardwoods, Dutch Elms mainly, their dark green leaves ravishing the eye with their gloss and stealing the red sunlight like an old man's money, casting deep shadows. From the branches, tendrils of death gray Spanish moss hung like the hair of the demons the dragons chased away at the new years. Wufei almost paused at the mental relation. Both demons and dragons had been costumed performers, reenacting old traditions transplanted from Earth with the family. But in his memories from early childhood they seemed starkly real in this context, as though the surrealism of his environment had given credible life to the gray haired demons of his childhood. Perhaps, he thought as he watched the red glow slowly fade from the blade of his still drawn sword, turning the blade the same color as the moss, they are real after all, and I have only just now accepted it. The thought made him dip the blade of his sword ever so slightly.

Again another change. As the vaulting formed by the branches of the trees grew thicker, blocking the sky from view all together, pairs of torches joined the edge of the path, just far enough from the edge to still allow Wufei an unobstructed line of grass to walk. The light was flickering and cool, as though electric, yet the flames were clearly visible. And then he saw the true source of the light, and felt the breath go out of his lungs as though he had been struck with a blow from a percussion riffle. From around the base of the trees, small globes of light, each no bigger than an insect moved, floating out into the path in swirls as though blown by the wind. They curled close to him and he saw inside their tiny lights, they were very tiny winged women. Each was different from the others, in face and dress, but all were very obviously of fine, old Chinese blood. They moved in careful swirls, lighting on the blade edge of his sword, curling close to his face. And they did the same to his guide, who seemed oblivious to the tiny, glowing women as they turned the folds of the brown robe into glowing rivers of light, outlining the form in a molten silver glow. And just as suddenly, they were gone, disappearing behind them as they walked in their same curling flights like dust motes filmed in reverse, falling back to the trees on silent, tinny wings of silver. Wufei stared in awe, and then found yet more to gape about as the trees parted with the suddenness of dawn in the desert.

His guide had progressed out into a clearing, surrounding a stone dais of some sort, which was open to the sky. Dead seeming red light lit the place, and Wufei realized the clearing was lined on the far side by the bases of the statues he had seen before they entered the trees. But his dark eyes focused on the center of the dais, and did not leave there again. A podium of sorts was facing him, and standing at it was a figure dressed in an old, stained, brown robe, hood pulled to hide the eyes and face. Before the figure was a book, spread open in the middle of its thick expanse of pages. The figure looked at him, or more oriented its head towards him, and spoke.

"Chang Wufei, son of the honorable Chang clan, descendants of the Dragons of the Mountains, I bid you welcome to my realm." The voice was like the turning of old, dry velum pages, like the slow movements of desert sands across each other, dry and whispering, bold and commanding in the same. It was both the voice of an old and young man simultaneously, ageless and yet old as time its self.

"Welcome," the figure that had been his mute and fluid guide said, "To the Garden of Forking Ways, the realm of my master."

And in that alien place outside of time, the figure of the boy descended from the noblest blood of the Dragons of the Mountains stood with his sword raised to the one to whom no man could raise a sword. The boy faced unquavering and unknowing what brave men had crumbled to ruins when facing, faced what had destroyed nations and empires, entire families and peoples, mountain ranges and rivers, and entire suns and universes as unblinkingly as it had spawned the creation of the very same. Eyes cold and clear like the dark waters of the border rivers of the Mongolian highlands looked unwavering on the thing dreaded by emperors and common men alike for longer than there had been a difference between the two. Chang Wufei, pilot of the Shenlong Gundam, faced Destiny.


	4. Thinking of My Brothers on a Moonlit Night

"Ah, such spine and sprit for one so young and fragile." The man in brown said. This man, this figure in brown on his dais of stone, turned his head down from the young boy before him to turn a page in the book before him. The wind rose and blew its hot breath through the trees, and something distant stirred, as though the turning of the page had been another step in the life of this green hell that had been named the Garden of Forking Ways. There was nothing about this place that felt right, nothing that was right, except to its master and creator, second eldest of the Endless, Destiny. Chang Wufei stood lest that a dozen yards from the second most powerful being in the known Universe, ignorant of what he faced, sword blade raised in challenge to the indignities he had suffered.

"Who are you?" the Chinese pilot demanded, dark eyes flashing in the clotted light of the invisible sun. "Who are you and why have you brought me where ever I am? What do you want from me!" The last came out pinched with an edge of panic and fear. He was loosing his grip on things once more, to the point of believing madness before believing what he saw.

"Ah. So full of questions, you are. How differently wonderful." The voice was like sand dunes dragging their weight across the seas of sand, moved only by the winds fierce whip. "And how deserving of answers too." The voice had become a whisper of dry paper. "I want nothing from you, son of the Chang clan, for there is nothing you could offer me that I have need of. I have been offered kingdoms and harems and every mineral you have ever thought of as valuable and then some, but none of it I have uses for. No, I do not want anything from you." Wufei's eyes hardened visibly. Everyone wants something, a rule he had learned long ago, and everyone had a price, even himself.

"So untrusting, and rightly so. Summoned to a place outside mortal understanding, with none of your precious rhyme or reason." The papery voice smiled acidly. "Child, you do not realize what you are dealing with. I am Destiny, second eldest of the Endless, the personification of fate and order in this chaotic universe. I govern all action and inaction, and" the figure paused, and turned a page, head angled down to it for a moment to scan the page before returning to center on Wufei, "I govern the lives of every living thing, even their deaths. So put your toy sword away, boy, it can do me no harm."

"How do I know you mean no harm to me." His muscles were beginning to cramp, held taunt and ready to spring. The tendons in his legs and back, weakened by their lack of use compared to his arms and torso, were beginning to scream with the strain of holding the burden of his other muscles. A loose strand of hair had found its way into his eyes, and was beginning to annoy him.

"Oh very well, boy. You have my word on my Great Book that no harm will come to you from either my servants or myself. You are, after all, a guest in my realm and at least deserving of that." Wufei waited a moment, then relaxed. With a practiced move, tense muscles gave way and fluidly returned the sword to its sheath at his waist in a melting of tension. His hand, however, still rested on the hilt, not close on it, but ready none the less. Trust did not come easy. Destiny gave a small sigh of annoyance, but was smiling beneath the shadow of his hood at the boy. Such spirit, and such spine, was a rare thing in a species that had the collective drive of sheep. The Chinese boy had straitened from his defensive crouch, and now stood rod strait looking up at Destiny, nobility oozing from every pore of his body like some coating slime.

"If you want nothing from me, and mean me no harm, why then am I here?" Wufei demanded. It was a façade, a shell. Inside he was past the point of such reason and thoughts. This was more terrifying that battle, more horrible than the killing fields of war. He had seen more death in his life than most souls saw in thousands of life times, but none of the atrocities and horrors had so terrified him as this. Not a crack showed in his armor, except the wild gleam in his dark eyes that came across as defiance, but was terror.

A smile formed under the shadow of the hood. "I invited you into my realm to offer you a gift I have given but a few mortals: a chance to read from my Great Book." Wufei looked blankly, uncomprehending, up. "I am offering you, boy, a chance to see your future. Or more correctly, I offer you a chance to read four pages of your choosing from my book, concerning anyone's past, present or future, including your own. This is not something I offer lightly, boy, and not something you can refuse. Come here, and make your choices."

Skeptical, but Wufei left such doubts unvoiced, he did as commanded. Steps of dark stone led down to the grass from the dais, smoothly polished they glowed dimly in the red light. Each step through the cool grass brought him closer to the still figure at the podium of stone. The forest around the clearing stirred with the cold, breathy wind, alive suddenly. And the glowing, dancing lights flowed from the forest on the winds. White, yellows, blues, and reds flowed in tendrils of tiny flying forms from the trees, and they settled around him, and on the dais, flickering forms of color on the stone stairs. And then he heard what he had not heard before. The small forms lifted hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million small voices in song as his foot fell on the first of the polished stone steps. It was cold, burning the soles of his feet like ice, but Wufei was lost in the song of the tiny, singing forms around him. It was a slow, methodical chant, in an old dialect of the language he had grown up speaking. They were singing of destiny, of glory to come and glory already found, of the making of the human soul. His eyes were fixed on the figure of Destiny, now outlined in the many colors of the small, flying forms that had lit upon his robe. He reached the final step, and walked out onto the surface of the dais, a black and white marble surface like a giant chessboard. The tiny women slowly softened their chant, and Wufei noticed them slowly drifting back into the forests, a few dozen at a time, like puffs of dandelion fluff. Wufei walked across the dais, so much larger than it had seemed from the grass, feet alternating from white to black marble squares with each step. He stopped a meter from the podium, and waited.

"Don't just stand there, come here beside me so that you may see the book, boy!"

"Assuming that I believe you can do what you say, how can I know what you are showing me is the truth?"

"You can't. Believe or don't believe. It doesn't matter to me, boy." Destiny shrugged. Wufei could not argue with indifference, something he had learned from his limited dealings with the Japanese Heero Yui. He walked around the podium, and stood beside the robed figure, giving the man proper distance of respect.

"So what do you wish to see first?"

Wufei, with the typical mentality of any Chinese warrior, smiled, and decided to go for something important.

"Show me my death."


	5. Welcome Rain on a Spring Night

The battlefield was already littered with floating shrapnel, the remains of hundreds of various models of mobile suits shattered by beam weapons and missiles. Chang Wufei watched, a disembodied set of senses in the blackness of space, the events unfolding before him. He saw two forces clash, the Earth Alliance against a space born fleet centered around a huge battle ship. And He saw the other pilots and himself caught between the two, fighting both somehow, a third wildcard in a battle of wild cards. He wondered how the division of forces had come about, as he saw once members of OZ battling each other from the three sides, and alliances so unimaginable he dared not think of how they had come about.

He saw the shape of an unfamiliar mobile suit streak away at full burn from the Earth forces, its blue and white body aglow in the light of the sun, deep in shadow on its lee side. But he knew who piloted the thing, knew no one else who would pilot a monster like that. It was Treize Khushrenada. The mobile suit was moving fast, towards an installation platform away from the main part of the battle. Wufei followed its movements, and saw at last what it was chasing.

The Gundam was enough like his Shenlong to be mistaken for it in the center of a melee of Taurus's, but better armed and far more agile. Its green teal body moved faster than the Shenlong, the joins had better mobility. A second dragon's fang made its reach god like, deadly when paired with the wider shield and longer reaching beam trident. Wufei distantly heard himself whisper the name of his dead wife, almost like a prayer to this new temple to her. What a beast this new suit would be, he thought, and he wondered what turn of events would grant him the new suit. He watched it rip apart a trio of the unfortunate Taurus suits, and turn in time to see the fast approach of Treize in his strange blue suit.

Wufei watched, fascinated, as the two suits clashed. Both were in pure form, flowing in their duel. Wufei noticed that neither he nor Treize used their extended weaponry, using only skill of beam saber and trident. Both were fighting to their bests. Suddenly he saw something and felt his chest tighten. The hydraulics in the right arm of the teal Gundam had been severed, fluid forming strange, glittering baubles in space like blood, and it had incapacitated the full motion of the arm. Treize pressed the injured side, and Wufei saw himself unable to counter. The beam saber of the strange suit passed through the arm of the Gundam, and continued in, boring into the body of the suit. Treize withdrew it, and made a wicked slice through the central section of the cockpit of the teal Gundam, and Wufei saw himself die in a billow of flame fueled by oxygen, hydraulic fluid, and the thruster fuel as the Gundam tore itself apart.

The shock passed after a moment, and Wufei again found himself looking down at the battered and stained parchment pages of the book on the podium. He shivered. That was it, that was how he would die, his Gundam run through because of severed hydraulics, at the hands of the man he wanted nothing more than to kill and yet respected more than a slew of his ancestors. At least he died valiantly.

"That is of course, only one possible death, but the most likely as things stand now." The papery voice of Destiny startled him. "That is the battle that ends the war you now fight. Thousands will die, including Treize, about four hours later."

"How does he die?" Wufei asked.

"Your friend, Duo Maxwell, catches him from behind and runs that hideous beam scythe through his mecha. Tragic really."

Just like Duo, Wufei thought, to kill an honorable soldier from behind. He managed to take pride in the fact that he was respected enough to be revenged by the American, though.

"What do you wish to see next? There are many possible futures for you, all open to your eyes."

Wufei thought for a moment, and puzzled long and hard. He had seen a possible death of his, a very possible one. He was a warrior; such a death was honorable. But there was something else he wanted more than glory, something he longed for.

"You say that is my death, or one of may possible deaths. What if I live?"

"That is a long future, far too long to show to you. Pick something small from it, and I will show you that."

"Very well. Show me my first born child, if I am fated to have any."

Destiny thumbed through the book, and stopped on a page near to where he had turned to show the battle. Wufei looked down at the page, and began to read.

Wufei found himself watching the interior of a Japanese style dojo, all wood and rice paper, seeming too delicate to him to serve as a place to train warriors. The interior was well lighted, and distantly he smelled lilies of some sort, noting several blue and white porcelain vases in the corners of the room with carefully arranged groups of flowers. He distantly heard footsteps, and wondered who it was.

The girl that entered the room was tall, thin, and better muscled than many boys her age. She was in her early teens, perhaps fourteen at the oldest, but her tall stature added two years to her appearance. Wufei gapped. His first born was a girl, and not just any girl. She had the makings of beauty and grace in her still childish face and body, a man killer waiting for the flower of woman-hood to full open. Her hair was like his, strait and fine, but lighter, more brown. Her skin was pale, but still bronzed by a childhood of sunlight. Eyes like two sapphires glittered with intelligence, aware of everything without having to move to take it in.

Wufei took a moment to register her clothing. She was dressed in baggy silk trousers, much like he preferred to wear, and a dark colored sports bra. One day she would be very beautiful, he saw, and saw that she would be a match for any man to contend with he amended when he saw his sword hanging at her waist in a practiced, comfortable way.

She closed here eyes, and breathed out slowly. With a flash of movement she drew the familiar blade, and stood carefully centering it with her body. Wufei watched, transfixed, as she began the very same excise sequence he himself preformed every night. But there were new elements as well, of a less traditional sense, borrowed from other cultures and schools of the blade. He saw her perform a series of rolling kicks, the blade following feet in what could have been something from the blade dances of Arabia, and moves that he recognized a Japanese followed in quick succession to it. Wufei felt his heart swell with pride, despite his modest disapproval of a fighting woman. This was no weak woman, however. This was his daughter, his first born, a woman born to the sword and to war.

She finished at last, and preformed the same flick and twist of the blade that sent it home to its scabbard every night when he practiced. I must have taught her, Wufei smiled to himself, for she has my style as the core of her own. She brushed back stray strands of hair stuck to her face by sweat, and for a moment Wufei saw the influence of someone else on her. He wondered who her mother was. And then she was gone, back the way she had come, careful, catlike steps moving her with a grace he envied.

The Shenlong pilot looked up from the book at Destiny's hooded face, and saw the shadows trying to hide a smile. Wufei felt as if he could sing, he was so happy over seeing this point of possible joy in his life.

"She is a rare one, your daughter, Chang. If she is born, whole worlds will know her name, and sing her glory. Or they will tremble in fear of her. Fate is strange like that."

"So she is to be a warrior?" Wufei wondered aloud. "What is her name, if you can tell me such a thing? What name will I tell the ancestors when she is born?"

"Her name is Meiran, Chang Ron Meiran. You..."

"I named her after Nataku..." Wufei fought to keep down tears he felt building. His beautiful, brave and stubborn Nataku, how he missed her. And he realized what he next wished to see before Destiny even began to ask.

"Find her in your book, old man. I want to know where the soul of my wife is. What has become of her?" Wufei's eyes flashed, dark motes of sudden emotion that almost but not quite made Destiny take a step back.

"Impudent youngster," he mumbled, but obliged. "You may not, however, like what you see."

Ignoring, Wufei turned his face to the page, and began to read it slowly.

He felt more than saw the prison of cold metal close around him, the thousands of wires and snaking tubes like tendons and veins of some great beast. Where was he, he wondered. It felt as though he were inside some great mecha. And then he realized, it was just that. It was the internal workings of his own Gundam he saw, in a way he had never seen before, even while they had been building her. What was going on?

And then he felt it, moving through the metal, along conduits and cables like an electrical surge, and saw the slight glow of light fill the area. It passed through where he was, and he understood. It was a spirit, a ghost, the soul of his wife, of poor, innocent and proud Nataku. And it, she, he corrected himself, inhabited the internal workings of his Gundam. He understood at last all those times he had felt her presence during a battle, or how he had remembered his few intimate times with her when he had been working on the great war mecha. It was the same, he now realized. She was still there, still protecting him, as she had been unable to do for him in life.

He closed his eyes, and looked away from the Great Book. He hurt, and yet he was happy at the same time, confused by these conflicting emotions. She was still with him.

Destiny spoke softly, voice like the whispering of sands blown by a night wind: "I told you that you may not like it. But now you know."

Wufei nodded. But he was cheered by the thought that she had loved him enough to stay with him in this way. It meant more to him than he had words for. Perhaps he would do as he had been taught to do for the spirits of those departed, and offer her gifts to keep her pleased. Yes, he decided, I will do that.

"So, you have one page left. What do you wish to see?" Destiny's voice jarred him out of his thoughts. He pondered, and desired.

"Show me what Duo Maxwell is doing, right this moment."

Destiny grinned, and thumbed back a handful of pages in the book, parchment crackling like the dried skin of a corpse.

"I think," said Destiny, "That your friend may need you very soon. I fear my siblings are playing their games again with him."

Wufei looked down at the page and read for a moment. He saw what he did not wish to see, a horror beyond words, a dishonor that was so horrible that it hurt to think it. How could such a thing happen to anyone? And done by one that he thought had much honor.

"No..." He whispered softly, unbelieving.

"I think you must go now, young one. Go quickly to your friends. You will be needed soon."

Chang Wufei nodded, and turned to walk off the dais, and back the way he had come to the place in the center of the Garden of Forking ways. Three steps struck hard stone, and the fourth found him back in the mountain clearing, the cold moon high above in the star filled sky.

No more time left, he thought, and began to break camp. He had to hurry.


End file.
